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The author analyses and defends the French referendum against Europe's new constitutional treaty. Even if the referendum was a disaster for the democratic legitimization of the EU, it had a significant democratic meaning, and hence came close to a first 'constitutional moment' of Europe. The referendum has made manifest the up-to-then latent crisis of legitimation. The crisis seems to be caused by new transnational relations of domination. A postnational soft Bonapartism is emerging. This new Bonapartism of the united executive bodies of Europe relies on a tremendous growth of informal power beyond state borders and beyond the law. The very political problem of Europe therefore is the re-legalization of informal power structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religious pluralism and the religiously induced behavior of minorities challenge the traditional understanding of those constitutional provisions which guarantee the freedom of religion. The article analyses, how freedom of religion is understood in the constitutional law of Germany, France and the United States. It reveals significant differences in the legal treatment of social behavior originating in religion. These differences offer insights how the law thinks and works: How it protects minorities and at the same time originates in a majority will. How it is both a democratic political means and an individual safeguard. How liberty is distributed between individuals and the society. The article takes the religious freedom clauses as an example for three different models in the civil rights theory and attributes them to Germany, France an the U.S. It explains these models with the rather different historical developments of individual rights in these countries and hence shows that our contemporary understanding of civil rights depends on their social, political and historical development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]